 Environmental refugees, corrective justice and a system of compensationJohn Owens International Journal of Green Economics, 2008, vol. 2, issue 3, 311-328 Abstract: Climate change threatens to create roughly 200 million environmental refugees by 2050. By the author's definition, these people will lack the goods required to live a minimally good human life and will be forced to cross international borders in search of resettlement and support. Given that climate change is deemed to be anthropogenic, this article responds to this prospective humanitarian crisis by presenting an argument for the compensation of environmental refugees by the nations that are most responsible for the majority of greenhouse gas emissions. A principle of corrective justice is employed in combination with a version of the capabilities approach to establish the claim that the world's developed nations are collectively responsible for the harm done to environmental refugees, and have a corresponding collective obligation to implement a system of compensation that restores environmental refugee's access to basic capabilities. After considering various objections to this argument, the author explores the nature of compensation due and how such a reparatory scheme might best be delivered. Keywords: environmental refugees; green economics; climate change; compensation; corrective justice; humanitarian crisis; greenhouse gas emissions. (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijgrec:v:2:y:2008:i:3:p:311-328 Access Statistics for this article More articles in International Journal of Green Economics from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd |
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